The Wire Magazine 1992-09

THE

blue.

note

‘critics* choice’

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MEGASTORES

NOW’S

THE TIME presents

THE NEWS SECTION

NOW’S
THE TIME

NOW’S

THE TIME presents

AN EDITOR’S IDEA

J" TONIGHT

BELFAST Crescent Arts
Centre (0232 242 338): Steve
Noble Qt (18); Old Museum
Arts Centre (0232 233 053):
Marilyn Crispell/Eddie Prevost

BIRMINGHAM MAC(021
440 4221): Marilyn Crispell/

BRENTWOOD Monkeys
Jazz (0277 218 897): Stan

CRAWLEY TheHawth
Centre (0293 552 941):
Outside In Festival: Saturday
5th- Django Bates, Bill

Shankar/Sheppard/

Raphiphi, Evan Parker,
Something Else with Larry
Stabbins/QRZ, Dick Heckstall

May, Sylvan Richardson.

Westbrook, John Surman,
Crispell/Prevost, Balanescu Qt
project with Keith & Julie
Tippett & Steve Arguelles,

Jazz Jamaica, Uno Sola Voz.
EDINGBURGH Queen’s Hall
(031 668 2019): Debut! with

Smith/Chick Lyall (Aug 31);
Bob Berg/Mike Stem Band

(1,2); George Shearing Duo
(3); Nana Vasconcelos/
Heartbeat (4); Courtney Pine &
The Paradise Reggae Band (4).
LEICESTER Phoenix Arts
Centre (0533 554 854): Steve
Berry/Peter Fairclough/Nikki

MANCHESTER Royal

Exchange Mobile:
Pyrotechnics (18-20) Band
On The Wall (061 832 6625):
Marilyn Crispell/Eddie Prevost
Duo (10); Mose Allison Trio
(17); Julian Joseph Qt (24).
OXFORD Cotswaid Lodge
Hotel (do 0865 243 306):
Bobby WellinsQt( 18)

(071 588 6565): Sax Appeal,
Jason Rebello Qt, Clark Tracey
Qnt (8-10)

JAZZ CAFE NWI (071284
4368): Dave Valentin (1-3);
Gwen Guthrie (8); Elaine
Delmar (9-10); Joe Hubbard
(11); Tony Remy Funk Project
(14); Bheki Mseleku (15); Joey
Calderazzo (22-23); Kenny
Wheeler (24); Noel McCalla
(25); Vanessa Simon (29)

JAZZ RUMOURS, N 16(081

Haslam/Liz Hodgson (11);
Steve Miller/Lol Coxhill/Phil

(18);

636 0933): Jimmy

PPIANISIMO CLUB (Oil
482 4224): John Law Qt(l4);
Alex Maguire Qt (21); Ian
Smith Qt (28)

THE SOUTH BANK
COMPLEX (071 928 8800):
Kronos Quartet (28)
WATERMANS ART
CENTRE (087 5681176):

for inclusion in the October

> SWIRE

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JOHN CAGE’S works/compositions
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8SWIRE

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THE TIME presents

FRANZ ABRAHAM: Festival Organiser

harmonia mundi u.k.

MORTON

FELDMAN

FOR

PHILIP

GUSTON

BIRTHDAY

Actually it wasn’t his birthday. But it was a huge party
down in Sicily to celebrate the work of
Mike Westbrook — and Kenny Mathieson flew down
with him. In the first part of our two-part feature
Britain’s most innovative Big Band leader discusses
structure, collaborating with Kate, and the
notorious Smith’s Hotel chord.

I by the begir

WESTBROOIC

(i Goodbye Peter Lorre), which is something I never thought I
would do, but has proved fascinating. Song-forms open up
another dimension again in structural terms, as in the
Brecht-Weill songs, or the songs in London Bridge, and I
greatly regret its lack of performances.”

London Bridge Is Falling Down, scored for a ten-piece band
and chamber orchestra, would seem a natural for The Proms,
where Westbrook will become the first jazz composer to be
featured in a main evening Prom on 30 August, when they
perform the Big Band Rossini at the Albert Hall. The Orchestra
will be back in action at the Outside In Festival in Crawley on
6 September, when they will perform a selection of his works,
including Measure for Measure, in what has been an active

? sWIRE

All Goods Worth Price Charged.

This is what Jack Daniel’s nephew said in 1907 We’re still
saying it today.

Mr. Lem Motlow put this slogan on crocks and jugs of his
uncle’s whiskey. You see, he knew our Jack Daniel’s Tennessee
Whiskey was made with Tennessee cave spring water and
mellowed through hard maple charcoal before aging. Mr. Motlow
knew value when he saw it. And still today, though Jack Daniel’s
is priced above many whiskeys, a sip will prove its worth.

SMOOTH SIPPIN’ TENNESSEE WHISKEY

TURN ON, TUNE IN,

In pre-MTV 1977, Television
were the strange new drug of
guitar elation. Now Tom
Verlaine’s epochal NYC group
have returned — after only 14
years — with that difficult third
album.

Jonathan 'Wright plugs into
the TV mindset.

The figure on the sofa is almost eerily familiar, still
skeletally thin, still with the half quizzical, half accusatory

since 1977, has been kind to Tom Verlaine.

vocalist and songwriter Verlaine; drummer Billy Ficca, his
wild curly hair now flecked with grey; monosyllabic bassist
Fred Smith with his lazy, mysterious smile; and guitarist
Richard Lloyd, the uneasy result of a sartorial squabble
between a lumberjack and a preppy.

Officially , we’re sitting in an EMI office to discuss Televi¬
sion’s third album Television , released 14 years after its
predecessor, the underrated Adventure. But, as Verlaine’s
opening gambit suggests, the past is colliding so violently

necessity shaky, to be made up as we go along.

DROPOUT

Which is perhaps appropriate. Television’s roots, after
all, lie in the ferment of what developed into the mid-70s New

“In New York at the time, there was no place to play,”
explains Richard Lloyd. “You had to rent your own theatre and
set up your own sound and lights and it was a big drag. So,
when Tom was trying to find a place and saw this CBGBs, we
didn’t know what it meant. When Hilly allowed us to play
there, other bands heard about it. Because you literally
couldn’t play anywhere without a record contract. People
would go there in droves and beg for a chance to play. Hilly
always gave it to everybody.

“Everybody got to play there at least once, so it was a place
where you could play every week, or whatever. It was just a

dissimilar and people
who was playing. I

they didn’t care
ict audience but

7SWIRE

gradually came in from many different angles to fill the void.
Musicians as varied as The New York Dolls, The Patti Smith
Group, David Byrne’s Talking Heads, The Ramones, Richard
Hell (a founder member of Television) and his Voidoids,
Suicide and Blondie had little to unite them beyond their
desire to rewrite the language of rock ’n’ roll. But, they were

chaotic in spirit, drawing on the force of these questing New
York avant gardes. What would become known as punk, a
“simple” thing, was in fact a flux of colliding musics,
reflecting and feeding on further flux.

Television’s part in this was laid out on their
seminal 1977 debut Marquee Moon. Smith’s bass is the anchor,
holding everything together. Ficca picks up the gauntlet laid
down by The Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker and throws
the spirit of Tucker’s naive energy against his own fluid rolls
and fills. Over this, Lloyd and Verlaine’s twin guitars call and
respond, pulling melodic ideas over long instrumental pas¬
sages, each daring the other to go just that bit further.

In the midst of all this, there’s Verlaine’s voice, perhaps the

is often lost - what’s more, the lyrical richness of such songs as
“Marquee Moon” and “Venus De Milo” needs the voice of
Verlaine for its true expression. But covers of Television songs
are also always awful because the tension between Verlaine the
songwriter and the band’s free jazz influence has been lost. As

INTERNATIONAL

ELLIOTT SHARP

ORCHESTRA CARBON+CARBON

+20 OTHER CONCERTS

victo

■ from the Quebec Government Office in the Ul

278WIRE

TELEVISION

“punk” solidified into that single thing, the style against
which all music was to be judged, this hounded improvisa¬
tion - and its roots - out of the discourse. To the extent, in
fact, that discussion of these areas now draw even Verlaine and
Lloyd into a conversation where each can surprise the other -
just as they do in performance and on record.

“For me, I was playing saxophone in the early 60s, you see,
so I fell into these people like Ayler and Coleman and
Coltrane,” says Verlaine. “This was like trying to sneak into
bars, being an underage kid trying to sneak into these bars in
Philadelphia to see Roland Kirk. Before he was Rahsaan!”

“Sun Ra I went to see a number of times with his orchestra,”
says Lloyd. “That would be wonderful because it was like jazz
trance - 45 minutes on the same number with 45 people
playing, 30 people playing the same thing and 15 of them
playing solos at the same time. At the end of it, you were just
really taken to another space. It was really nice, but myself I
was always following the electric guitar, blues and
psychedelia. ”

“I hated electric guitar. I thought it was the most twee piece
of shit you ever heard. De-nah, de-nah, nah nah nah, nunk [or
thereabouts }. What's that?”

“That’s “Train Kept A Rollin’.” I hate that shit.”

“No, but that for me was an onslaught.”

“So you like it?”

"Yeah, that was the first time I liked electric guitar.”

“Oh, you liked it. I liked more Hendrix and the Grateful
Dead’s first record.” Lloyd shakes his head slightly.

“That was five years later actually.”

“Oh, you mean Yardbirds.”

“Yeah, Yardbirds. I think 1965. And “All Day And All Of
The Night” - that again was an onslaught.”

Echoes of this “onslaught” — the “Brit Invasion” - found
expression in the wave of American garage bands of the 60s
(collected by Lenny Kaye on the Nuggets albums). Television

“What we would do is middle 60s stuff,” says Lloyd, “Seeds
or Chocolate Watch Band (“Psychotic Reaction,” pipes up
Ficca to general approval). Count Five. There were this zillion

top forty and none of their other material would get in. Los
Bravos - “Black Is Black” - you know, some really wonderful
one-hit wonders - “Dirty Water”. The Troggs had a few. If
you took all of those bands’ records that actually went
somewhere and actually made one band out of it, maybe we
were influenced by that.”

It’s worth pausing to recall Greil Marcus’ comment on
garage rock and its relationship to punk - “destroying one
tradition, punk created another one.” Rock in the mid-70s
reinvented a heritage for itself not from the successful or
important groups of the day, but from a mess of already
forgotten one-hit wonders who came out of nowhere and
plunged straight back. Today it’s almost compulsory for rock

’n’ roll bands to cite this music - but it wasn’t always so.

In such a context, what space can a reformed Television

be received, with Lloyd quietly laughing to himself at the
thought that a generational gap of impossibly subtle distinc¬
tions might see an elder brother buying Television whilst his
kid brother goes for Nirvana.

But of course the DIY ethos let loose by punk has extended
much further than rock - the kid in the garage is as likely to be

Scream or The Shamen and trying to do both). The pitfall in
this mixology cc
mix-up, failing t<

connect with old or new audience. It’s a pitfall Television
recognise: “There’s fusion, the combination of jazz and rock,
but they get all homogenised together,” says Billy Ficca. “It
comes out neither jazz nor rock. So, our concept is fission,
where you don’t mix them up, you don’t homogenise them.

and when it’s rock, it’s pure rock.”

Listening to the latest album in this light, it’s possible to
see Television’s new recordings as far closer in spirit to the
reconstituted Wir(e) than to the “comeback” of The Buzz-
cocks. It’s not that Television have radically altered their
sound or attempted to utilize technology in the way Wir do.
Indeed, this is “traditional” guitar music with more than one
nod back to the past. “Willie", for instance, makes reference to
Verlaine’s own catalogue, recalling “Postcard To Waterloo”
from his solo album Words From The Front, a song which in
turn self-consciously celebrated The Kinks. Yet the sense of
adventure is still present, the sense of musicians both challeng¬
ing each other and moving towards a common goal.

The past and the present collide again.

So, why did they re-form? Why did they form? With
free jazz and garage rock in such combustible proximity how
could Television not form? Lou Reed once commented that
getting the change from one major chord to another “right”
was something that continued to give him immsense pleasure.
The triumph of Television’s “fission” was to get this change
“right” from a new angle, showing it was possible for
songwriting values and improvisation to coexist. In doing so,
they posed questions about the possibilities of the two guitars,
bass, drums, voice line-up which has yet to be answered by a
rock community which even today barely recognises the
question. Like Hendrix before them, this has resulted in
Television being simultaneously marginalised and deified,
assumed to exist in a space purely of their own making.

With so few even asking the right questions, perhaps it’s
logical Television should choose to pick up where they left off.
14 years ain’t nothing when there’s work to be done. ■

22 =WIRE

THE4^NEWMUSIC

SEVILLE • 14 th to 21 th SEPTEMBER • 1992

14th to 19 th SEPTEMBER. 21:00. SWISS PAVILLION

SPECIAL SECTION

fflSPANIC-SWISS
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

Ensemble Contrechamps • Jacques Demierre
Percussion Group, dir.Pedro Estevan • Cristobal Halffter
IGNM Ensemble • Thomas Kessler • Pierre Marietan • Jep Nuix
Luis de Pablo • David Padros • Mario Pagliarini
Oberwalliser Spillit • La Strimpellata • Jiirg Wytenbach.

14th SEPTEMBER

GAVIN BRYARS

15 th SEPTEMBER

PIANO CIRCUS AND JOANNA McGREGOR

16th SEPTEMBER

K.STOCKHAUSEN ENSEMBLE

(*) Free Entrance

17th SEPTEMBER

LONDON JAZZ COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA

18th SEPTEMBER

SCHONBERG ENSEMBLE

19th SEPTEMBER *

PERCUSSION HAPPENING

20th SEPTEMBER*

SPANISH NEW MUSIC AND WIM MERTENS

Eduardo Laguillo and Pangea • Manuel link
Gualberto • La Banda del Lago

21st SEPTEMBER

MICHAEL NYMAN BAND
AND ANDALUSI ORCHESTRA TETUAN

EXPt*?2

Hr

Universidad

H ISPALENSE

Junta de Andaluda • Consejeria de Cultura • British Council • Netherlands Pavillion
Seville Comisaria for Expo • Swiss Pavillion • Morocco Pavillion.

THE SONG'"

The theme issues over the
last few months have been
intended to discuss and ex¬
plore music in ways that cut
across tradition genre (and
marketing) boundaries. So
this month we take a look or
several at modes of express¬
ion that certainly predate
the current state of things,
and perhaps go back to the
dawn of music — whatever
that might have been. The
SONG and the DANGE: we
may not know why and how
they started, but we do have
some idea of their presence
and changing impact in mod¬
ern music. From Stravinsky
to James B r o w n , from
Schubert to Sinatra to Elvis
Costello, the shaping de¬
mands DANCE and SONG
make, some obvious, some
not, are still shifting, still re¬
aligning. Some of them, we
hope, have been pinned
down in the pages that fol-

AND

THE DANCE

25SWIRE

mean the end of
Popular Song as
we know it? Or
the start of a
new open-ended
dance afterlife?

The death of
the Original, or
the birth of the
infinite version?

David Toop
looks/locks into
a brand new

CUT'n’MIX

2SSWIRE

29 SWIRE

Cl
I BE

f

RANK

MARK SINKER
COMPARES TWO
VERSIONS OF
“MY FUNNY
VALENTINE”
AND WONDERS
WHY THEY
DON'T SING EM
LIKE THAT ANY
MORE.

They don’t exist any more. The wisecracking song¬
writer duos of yore, the legends in pairs who took long-ago
Broadway by storm — who knew how to craft a lyric with no
voice in mind, in particular, but the idea that nonetheless
someone, known or unexpected, would take their work and fill

no one left to do it: no singers now calling for it. The song and
the singer, the song and the singer as they once were , are both gone.

If we want to understand why - instead of just moaning
about how things aren’t what they were — we have to
acknowledge one of the few serious attempts to revive the
craft-as-was in its fullest richness, operating right there in the
mainstream, demanding and expecting the fullest popular

dissipated it. And these are not merely the present generation’s
lack of will or taste or adequate talent. We need to understand
how history itself, shaped by changing technology, rendered
the project more or less unthinkable.

This attempt at revival/renewal starts with a half-forgotten
b-side to a 1979 chart hit - "My Funny Valentine”, the flip of
“Oliver’s Army”, Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ Radar
single, UK #2 in February of that year. It peters out
somewhere in the mid-80s - committed songwriters abound
and indeed proliferate, but the unique moment passes; for all

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: ■ ASK FOR IT BY NAME

Costello’s imitators and disciples opt to work in cult seclusion.
At just the moment the 7" single picks to disappear.

“My Funny Valentine” was written by Lorenz Hart and
Richard Rodgers for the Broadway musical Babes In Arms:
Rodgers and Hart, who may have gone on to commit The
Sound Of Music, a mid-60s tragedy, were in their time rightly
feted, twin pinnacles of their profession, accorded respect even
by avant gardists like Coltrane or Milton Babbitt (actually
Babbitt’s more of a Jerome Kern fan).

grant Broadway at its peak the Parnassian significance some
allow it, in the tale of the Great American Popular Song - only
rarely turned a song into a standard: as Robert Kimball (Cole
Porter’s biographer) suggests in his sleevenotes to Ella Fitz¬
gerald’s 1956 The Cole Porter Songbook Vol.l , this LP on
original release introduced Porter’s songs to more people than

selves. A standard was not yet simply an institution in danger
of being supperclubbed to death by third-rate Las Vegas
showbiz smarmers - more, as Fitzgerald’s involvement sug¬
gests, an independent aesthetic object of value precisely insofar
as jazz improvisers chose to explore it, its shape, its weight, its

Actually the turning point in the fortunes of many a song
height, being his ability to transmute the field of play from

harmonic and rhythmic abstraction into the elegant art of
everyday conversation - in melody and meter, on-stage.

Today hyperbole enshrines Sinatra to the point of urbane
mummification. In November 1953, when he recorded “My
Funny Valentine”, everything was still in play, in particular-
as far as he was concerned - his future. He’d been a massive
teen idol, but that was over: his only hope was to relaunch
himself, beyond mere adolescent fashion, into the pantheon of
Timeless Grownup Showbiz Greats. 1954’s Songs For Young
Lovers (with “Valentine” as its closing cut) was his opening
shot, a record that made revolutionary use of the time available
on the new microgroove 33rpm long-player, to simulate a
mini-concert consisting of the songs of Porter, Rodgers/Hart,
the Gershwins, the deathless titans of Pop’s refined past. It
didn’t itself meet with unalloyed critical acclaim, or sales: but
it got the ball rolling. By the time the great rock’n’roll
catastrophe hit it, Sinatra was established - in profound
opposition to whatever rock would come to mean, good or bad
- as the colossus bestriding the whole world of (adult) Pop.
“Va|entine” will be a minor ally in this opposition.

There are certain superficial similarities between the
situation Costello was fashioning for himself in the mid-70s
and the one Sinatra found himself in in the early 50s, even
though the latter was an idol in apparent decline, the other a
nobody with no apparent prospects. In particular, Costello’s

32SWIRE

FRANK/COSTELLO

33SWIRE

FRANK/COSTELLO

34 SWIRE

35SWIRE

at the Thar

From Twyla Tharp to Michael Clark and back again,
Allen Robertson tells how modern dance
changed the music that went with it.

How we, the audience, hear music can determine how
we respond to the choreography we see. The spirituals Alvin
Ailey uses as the score for Revelations (I960) provide the
emotional bedrock on which the movement is built.
Tchaikovsky’s score for Swan Lake does the same. And would
Torvill and Dean have won the Gold Medal if they hadn’t used
Bolero to help built up their crescendo?

chose the recordings she used for her Nine Sinatra Songs (1982)
because they seemed to her to represent the last time when
men and women could relate to one another without violence,
the last time when we could be openly romantic without
appearing soppy or silly.

Throughout her career Tharp has been one of the major
liberating forces in the ways music is used for dance. She had
plenty of precedents, but she is the one who really opened up
popular music as suitable accompaniment to serious dance.
Tharp is incredibly savvy. She knows full well that audiences
can be seduced by a song. Refusing to have her creativity
shackled or put into arbitrary slots, Tharp has gone beyond the
obvious and found new ways of shaping an audience’s percep¬
tions of rigorously intelligent movement via instantly recog-

End

¥

In 1973 she created Deuce Coupe for the Joffrey Ballet to a
collage of Beach Boys tunes. In 1974 she used original Fats
Waller recordings for Sue's Leg, in 1975 she turned to pop hits
from rocker Chuck Berry for Oceans Motion. She has also used,
among others, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Art Tatum, Paul
Simon, Supertramp and Springsteen - to say nothing of Bach,
Haydn, Glazunov, Brahms and John Philip Sousa. Tharp has
also commissioned scores from the likes of David Byrne, Glenn
Branca and Philip Glass.

Like many of the best choreographers, Tharp is musically
literate but she has never been a musical snob. Because she
treats each of her composers with equal respect and without a
hint of condescension, Tharp pulls off dances that few can
match. Her movement devices for Chuck Berry would sit

Yet before Tharp started her eclectic experiments much of
the musical repertoire was barred from consideration. No
self-respecting modernist in the 1960s or '70s would have
dared to dip back into the 19th-century for inspiration. When
Tharp first did so, some members of the “knowing” audience
automatically assumed the purpose was parody. They were
(often still are) ready to see and hear any such work as a

Music provides atmosphere, emotional colouring

to a Bach partita or Ice-T would be likely to elicit two very
different responses from a viewer. This explains why certain
types of music are invariably associated with certain types of
choreography.

One of the strongest such alignments occurred when the

using the music of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Adams.
Their rhythmic drive and steady pulse closely matched the
choreographic concepts of artists such as Lucinda Childs and
Laura Dean whose dances use increments of movement in the
same sorts of building-block sequences as these composers.

Childs, who is widely regarded as a key figure in contem¬
porary American dance, is something of a stranger to British
audiences. Her company has regularly toured in Europe, but
never in the UK. Her only work created for a British company,

years ago to a commissioned composition by Gavin Bryars. His
powerful score with its burnished brass rhythms strokes
Childs’s choreography. Movement and music become a ribbon
unravelling from a spool, with the smooth beauty of silk
sliding across warm flesh. The outcome is delicate and weighty
in a single go.

Composer Steve Blake does the same for Lea Anderson. His
jazz score for her two groups, The Cholmondeleys and The

36* WIRE

even enlightening. In his recent Modern Masterpiece Clark took
on that monolith of all dance scores, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du
printemps. In 1913 it evoked a riot among the opening night
audience. Since then, the score which kick-started the modern
era in music has proven a fatal siren to dozens of choreog¬
raphers. Clark, searching for a way to recapture the outrage of
the Paris premiere, devised a half-hour prologue using a
hodge-podge of loud rock (including punk Stravinskys The Sex
Pistols), goofy costumes and gimmickry in order to get his
audiences charged up and ready to confront Stravinsky’s
barbaric rhythms as if they were brand new once again.

Much has been written about the fifty-year collaboration
between Stravinsky and choreographer George Balanchine. In
addition to ballets, the two men also worked together on
Broadway and even for Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circus
where Balanchine commissioned Stravinsky’s “Circus Polka”
for showgirls and elephants.

More than any other composer of our century, Stravinsky
gloried in - instead of looking down his nose at - the dance.
(He was also one of the first to take notice of jazz - but the
relationship of jazz to modern dance is a whole other article.)
He knew there existed the possibility that choreography could
enhance (rather than distract from) his own creation. Many of
his major scores were conceived to be seen as well as heard. The
pit orchestra of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet still plays
more Stravinsky than any other band in the world.

The other major on-going collaboration of seminal import-
rt forms is that of Merce Cunningham and John

what we are already hearing in the music.

Carrying that sort of logic to its most radical
conclusion, one arrives at dance performed in silence. When
this happens dance becomes its own song — particularly if
you’re a percussionist. Twyla Tharp’s The Fugue (1970) is a
stunning example of this. Its score consists of a series of
movement phrases composed of nineteen counts each. They are

a floor that has been miked so that their percussive steps
become an aural replica of the visual expression. The perfor¬
mers start each phrase together then go off on canonic
to be back in unison for each nineteenth beat.

Cage. This v

is abandoned the traditional links
nee to create a new, free-wheeling
o give autonomy to both. In their
:e independently, each
rn rules. The links is meant to be nothing

37HWIRE

3SBWIRE

\. Baker! Reclftrm

THE

TUNE

JUNE

June Christy was an important figure in a signifi¬
cant period of the history of popular music. She became
prominent in the late 1940s and lasted through the 50s, but
by the end of the 1960s (long before her death in 1989) she’d
ceased to work regularly. This retreat coincided not only with
the drying-up of what John Lewis likes to call ‘the American
ballad’ but also the end of the more transient but once-lively
tradition of Tin Pan Alley. Initially playing an important role
in Stan Kenton’s most controversial - and popular - period,
she later, as a solo artist, exemplified many of the problems
popular singers were beginning to have in finding audiences
and material.

Aged 19 , Christy had become the Kenton band’s singer
in the summer of 1945, replacing Anita O’Day. At this point
it was a well-drilled outfit, derived from Jimmy Lunceford’s -
larger than average (to suit Kenton’s own larger-than-life
personality) but still basically a swing band competing with
many similar.

She sang on five of the tracks recorded that July — the
important one however, was “Tampico”, a wry, sardonic little
novelty number celebrating the doubtful attraction of what
sounded like some exotic Mexican location (it was actually a
World War Two US Navy Base) and the ‘bargains’ to be found
there. It sold a million copies.

genre with the band: “Shoo Fly Pie” (. . . and apple pan¬
dowdy/makes your eyes light up, stomach say ‘howdy’ . . )
was if possible even dafter than “Tampico”. It sold another

Big hits aren’t the first thing one associates with Kenton or
his band; against the floodlit glare of his later, artier ambitions
they tend to get overlooked - but they need to be acknow¬
ledged for a number of reasons.

For a start, they added massively to the band’s economic

the larger outfits. Added to this, they confirmed the newfound
importance of records - the wartime V-Disc scheme had
proposed the value of records as a means of retaining and
developing cultural linkages, and Kenton’s record company,
Capitol, fresh into the post-war field, was intent on estab¬
lishing itself as a major - even though radio was still perceived
as the main channel of opportunity and sheet-music sales were

Jack Cooke
digs into the
lost history of
June Christy —
the 40s songbird
who worked with
Stan “Progressive
Jazz” Kenton,
sang the best and
worst of Tin Pan
Alley and still
held a torch for
Adult standards.

still used as a statistical base-line of popularity for the songs
themselves. Kenton might well have grasped earlier than most
the notion of the band, the records and the name as a unified
and self-contained system of communication, but such succes¬
ses nonetheless proved Christy a major asset within this set-up.

That she could sing was never in doubt. The million-sellers,
however, hardly indicate her range or the factors that made her
so individual. That evidence was elsewhere, most notably in
two Ellington-derived songs recorded around this time. “Just
A-Sittin’ And A-Rockin’” (with Kenton) and “Prelude To A
Kiss” (one of a mass of songs done with a small group drawn
from the larger outfit) found her dealing first with a line more
rhythmically than melodically driven, whilst the second
required her to deal with the song’s wide top-to-bottom range
and difficult intervals.

Although the full richness of her lower register was yet to
develop, the warm, husky mid-range and the distinctive
vowels are clearly evident. So too is the virtual absence of
vibrato on long notes - one of the factors that fitted her
particularly for Kenton’s style and gave her singing an
intensely ‘modern’ patina. Finally, what sets her apart from

O’Day) or harmonic restructuring (like Sarah Vaughan) is the
unhurriedly conversational sense of time which enabled her to
walk through a lyric and claim it as her own whilst leaving its
shape relatively intact.

The trick was the employment of all of this, in order to

401WIRE

CHRISTY

realise the singer’s full potential. Enter Kenton’s newly-
:r, Peter Rugolo. The first exam-
a major shift of focus, recorded in
the summer of 1946, was “Willow Weep For Me”. Ann
Ronell’s ballad of distilled despair offered no hit-parade
aspirations (death and woe were not chart constants in those
days, though Artie Shaw’s “Gloomy Sunday" had once nearly
pulled off the trick). The song’s dark emotions were fully
exposed by Rugolo’s dissonant score, and used all the resources
of Christy’s voice and delivery in a clear attempt at ‘art-music’
(with a capital ‘A’), confined nevertheless within a popular-
song form.

It was the start of a transition which ended in February
1947 when Rugolo put a spectacular full-stop behind Christy’s
association with the pop novelties (which had continued to
flow through the band's book like a financial lubricant): he
unveiled his crowded, raucous setting of Joe Greene’s surreal
and apocalyptic miniature, "Across The Alley From The

During this phase “Progressive Jazz” was beginning
to replace “Artistry In Rhythm” as the band’s trading banner,
though the process was interrupted when Kenton melo¬
dramatically announced his retirement in the late Spring of
1947 (on the grounds of physical and mental exhaustion).

It didn’t last long; by September he was back in the studio
putting together the material for the album-bound set of 78s
that relaunched the band and celebrated the “Progressive Jazz”

quick appreciation of a relationship really only widely ‘disco¬
vered’ much later by rock musicians).

Inevitably, the ‘art-song’ concept returned to the agenda.
“Lonely Woman”, Rugolo’s setting of a song written in
England by Benny Carter and Ray Sonin years previously, and
the recitative “This Is My Theme” were both included in the
album. Here again, morbid material is explored to an accom¬
paniment of oil-and-vinegar scores dominated by strenuous
trumpet-section work and George Weidler’s curiously sinuous
alto, placing heavy reliance on Christy’s ability to work
convincingly against frequently perplexing backgrounds.

Equally fascinating, however, is some of the more pop-
orientated material that Christy and Rugolo chose to do. Joe
Greene’s “Soothe Me” had lyrics of, for the time, an intensely
sexual nature, whilst “Curiosity” concerned itself with a less
knowing but still essentially sexual theme. Equally, two
further songs, “I Told Ya I Love Ya (Now Get Out)” and “He
Was A Good Man As Good Men Go (And As Good Men Go
He Went)” reveal a proto-feminist attitude rare within the
genre, and a cynicism about notions of fidelity which contrasts
strongly with post-war romanticism and reflects the reality of
the uncertainty of the period and the volatility of social
arrangements. To my knowledge, such songs have never been
studied from a serious perspective, but it’s there for the

For one thing, it throws light on the liveliness of popular

song in this period, and how directly it speaks — and
sometimes subversively - to its audience. Put it together with
the dark emotional tones of the more consciously ‘artistic’
material, and maybe — even though unlikely — it says
something about a certain receptiveness to modern music,
because it was at this point that Christy began to be successful
in the ‘female vocalist’ category of numerous popularity polls.

Although she was thus edging towards a solo career, Christy
toured with Kenton again in 1950 as part of the gigantic
‘Innovations In Modern Music’ orchestra; again two items,
Kenton’s own - wordless - “June Christy” and Rugolo’s
setting of “Lonesome Road” were included in the 12" 78s that
both announced the tour and — by virtue of their \2" quality
format — implied its ‘classical’ aspirations.

Whilst both pieces stand as a reminder of Christy’s versatil¬
ity — in the tribute named for her she’s the only melodic strand
against a background of rattling percussion - neither track is
particularly satisfying. They don’t have the conviction of
"Lonely Woman” or retain its clear ‘art-song’ format, nor do
they have the effervescent drive of the more popular offerings.
They lack any kind of emotional or communicative edge: the
voice, exceptional though it is, is offered only for itself.

Yet at the same time a modest single crept out under
Christy’s own name. Here, Rugolo’s smaller-scale setting of
“I’ll Remember April” exploited to the full the singer’s ability
to handle long notes, the rich middle register and the ability
to manipulate a melody without distorting the sense of the

Now finally she launched herself on a solo career. However
for a number of reasons this proved to be by no means the end
of her association with Kenton or his music.

By the time the 1950s had begun, singers were coming

42SWIRE

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tinued on page 51

43IWIRE

Revolutionary
Chicago producer
Larry “Mr Fingers”
Heard claims
to know jack
about the
wired world of
Techno (but
plenty about
the mysteries
of House).

Louise Gray

DO THE

.SHl

CH S

0

4 /

*

lets Mr Fingers do the talking

Seven years ago, as the first stirrings of House
music were heard in this country, there was one track that
stood out on the tatty advance cassette that London Records,
via Chicago independent label, DJ International, were hand¬
ing out to the press. No, actually they were all notable, from
Farley Jackmaster Funk’s “Love Can’t Turn Around” to Chip
E’s “Godfather Of House Music", but it was “Mysteries Of

floated, that was different. Of all the early House music.
Fingers Inc.’s “Mysteries” was the only track that existed
outside any reference to the old House ancestors disco, electro,
Philly and soul. It was as if Larry Heard (Mr Fingers himself),
and the two vocalists (Robert Owens and Ron Wilson) who
together comprised Fingers Inc., had dropped out of the sky.

Even so long after the landing, Heard’s name remains a
byword for innovation amongst club musicians. Fingers Inc.
followed “Mysteries” in 1988 with Another Side (Indigo),
House music’s first (and best) album. Returning to his Mr
Fingers solo persona, he then restated much of his early
electronic work with the Amnesia album (also Indigo), 12
drum and keyboard tracks that provided House with a
blueprint (and were, for all their techology, starkly emotion¬
al). Yet with the recent release of his debut for MCA, the Mr
Fingers album Introduction , Heard is turning his spacey
landscapes over to jazzy fusions and (finally) songs.

This will be, for those used to the strict musical
segregation of most British clubs, a little hard to take. Yet
Heard was never, in any Detroit sense, a Techno musician. A
journeyman musician who had played drums in R&B, jazz
fusion, rock bands, his listening has always been eclectic.

“George Duke, Rodney Franklin, Mahavishnu Orchestra,
Chick Corea's Return To Forever. A lot of local people like
Judy Roberts and Nightwind. I was always heavily into
Genesis - yes, really - and Rush, and good keyboard players. I
liked Rick Wakeman. And then Yello, Kraftwerk. Right
now,” and here he holds the telephone set out to his living
room, “I’m listening to the Yellow jackets. You familiar with

Learn that all this lot are grafted onto the tree that bore
Fingers Inc. and suddenly the alien associations just teleport
away, Star Trafe-fashion. The music that grew into Techno
grew organically, after all.

Actually, it’s no good trying to get Heard to explain his
own importance within House music: “Jack means nothing to
me”, he’s said, referring to the then pervasive j-j-jack it up
House style in an 1988 interview. “Still doesn’t”, he says four
years on. There go, in one sweep, the early House crowd of
Chicago — Marshall Jefferson et al — with whom Heard was still
associated, within a scene that had not yet developed a
semantics to sort out its constituent parts: Deep House, Acid
House, Techno. Of that seminal, loose and gloopy track that
reverberated around the world’s dancefloors: ‘“Washing
Machine’ was just a recording of me fooling around with a
synthesiser and changing the different modes. It wasn’t
intentionally an acid track.”

So what was it?

“Something I liked.”

“These tracks - 'Mysteries of Love’, ‘Can You Feel It’,
‘Washing Machine’ - were impromptu. There was no real
formula to them. I don’t subscribe to [the idea that] music is
supposed to be this, and supposed to be that, and produced
like that and all.” His voice drops to a whisper now. “It’s just

44IWIRE

45SW1RE

HEARD

expression. And that’s what the production is, whatever I’m
thinking at the time. That’s what it is, no matter what a
specialist may say about it."

So, were those tracks intended to be dance music?

“Nah, not really. The formulation of ‘Mysteries of Love’ is
jazzy. That bassline,” and he sings the notes of the shifting riff
down the Chicago-London telephone line, boom-boom-bm-bm-
boom , the electronic delay producing a ghost of a sound for each
note, “is a jazz line.” An arch snigger follows. “Put some
strings over it. Make it pretty. Keep it simple. Didn’t go way
out with it. That was the expression at the time.”

What words would he use to describe his music? There’s a
silence, an unease on the line, and then: “I don’t know, I really
don’t know. It’s got like a jazz feeling to it, but it’s danceable,
and now, at least, there’s this R&B structure, so I’m at a loss
for words. Other people say they hear jazz in the air; gospel.

At this point, several analyses suggest themselves. One,
that Larry Heard is a shy, retiring character, best left at home

Top Git. It’s grey, and he loves it. (In fact, MCA, his main
British label, had advised me that kitty-talk in the interview
was a way to get Heard himself to purr.) Two, that he sees his
early work as successful accidents, more luck than design, and
thus immune to the probes of subsequent verbal inquiry. Or
three, that Heard himself is so uncomfortable a frontman that
he prefers to create this intangible thing, music, to act as his
interlocutor.

“I do things by feel . . . A lot of times, if I try to describe
my music to people, I don’t really get through to them. If they
hear it, nine times out of ten they like it”.

This is certainly as specific as his conversation gets.
Typically, Heard has always chosen others to interpret his
songs. One of these, Robert Owens, (who in 1990, moved
over into Frankie Knuckles’ apartment in New York City and
has subsequently released masterly material like “I’ll Be Your
Friend” and “Visions”) is also a practised employer of such
vague-speak, invariably talking in terms of soul, spirituality
and meaningfulness, even when his singing style — a stream of
sexualised darkness - is eloquent enough to make everyone else
(James Brown, Barry White, Prince included) sound like
virgins. “Can You Feel It”, an early Fingers Inc. instrumental,
when re-released in 1988 with Martin Luther King Jr’s / have a
dream speech superimposed on it became a House anthem. In
On Top Of The World (Big Life), the ecological-theme album

Dennis declaims across the music, in what Heard calls a “Gil
Scott Heron kind of situation”. Elsewhere, Heard has pro¬
duced songs by British artistes Adamski and Electribe 101,
and talks of his present desire to write for Brit club/soul singer
Omar: offered his dream ticket, he’d work with arch-fusioneers
Roy Ayers, Rodney Franklin, Phyllis Hyman, Jean Carne,
Dexter Wansell, Brand New Heavies and (“definitely”) the
Young Disciples.

Indeed, this present incarnation of Mr Fingers was presaged
by Lil Louis’ debut album, From The Mind Of Lil Louis
(London, 1989), on which Heard took ample co-production
and writing credits. The experimental, kid-at-the-controls
electronics of Fingers Inc. were shed for a style that combined
a low-level jazz funk with Heard’s typically spacious structure.
Introduction hones the process further. Although the album
features two Owens-led tracks, the emphasis (as shown by its
two singles, “Closer” - which took top slot on Billboards
dance charts - and “On A Corner Called Jazz”) is on an
unhurried, casually jazz vibe. For the first time. Heard takes
over as lead vocalist. The change wrought by solo work is
evident in the song structures. “I am putting more thought
into the writing now, instead of going with the first idea, I try
to structure it more, try to copy the R&B format. To make it a
little more accessible to the mainstream.”

Mainstream, presumably, equates with
getting paid, comprehensible business deals and a move out of
cult status. “Mysteries Of Love” was a typical novice-label
tragedy. Released originally on Heard’s own Alleviated label,
selling 30,000 plus, then re-released on DJ International.
“That deal was a . . . learning . . . experience,” Heard
remembers now. “But getting paid wasn’t actually our main
focus; we were more interested in getting some material out.
And we had jobs, too. I worked with social security adminis^
tration at that time. I was a benefit authoriser until 1988,
when Another Side came out. After that, I quit to go into music
full time. That’s probably a reason why the more recent stuff
sounds more worked out. Before, music was just after work

Now it’s a full-time affair. While Mr Fingers is recording a
second album for MCA, Heard is planning a new It concept
with Dennis and signing up acts - two are confirmed: Club Ice
and Quiet Storm - for release on a new label in association
with Rene Gelston’s Blackmarket label in London. Although
Fingers Inc. officially split in 1989, Heard continues working
with Ron Wilson and his presence is felt on all Owens’

Of Chicago, nothing changes. The worldwide success of
House music has left the radio waves unaffected. “We’ve sold
records here, but House music has always been seen as a taboo
here. Even disco was taboo; it was perceived as very gay, very
drugs, very black, and House music was seen the same way. So
you have to be a gay, black drug addict to go dancing. Who
made that rule?”

An unscrupulous thought occurs: is Heard wilfully chang¬
ing his labels around as a way to beat his city’s antipathy
towards House music? No, he doesn’t need to. Record-counter
clerks describe his audience profile to him: “[They] say it’s the
typical working stiff that buys the albums. Not real young
kids, high school age, it’s the older people. Ageing club-
goers, I guess.” Moreover, Larry Heard has always defiantly
avoided the strictures of any definition. There’s jazz in the air,
some R&B, some hear gospel. It’s just. . . expression. ■

46 sWIRE

about this time

WIRE T-SHIRT

prices: white or black, r
white or black, li
overseas: please add an

THE VELVET

OVERGROUND

Mel Torme made his stage debut at the age of four,
when a band-leader at the Blackhawk Restaurant in his native
Chicago spotted the youngster singing along in the front row

popular Monday night feature with the band, and pulled down
15 dollars for his troubles.

It was an unlikely beginning to an extraordinarily varied

where he rates alongside Sinatra, Fitzgerald and Vaughan,
Torme has also made his mark, at one time or another, as a
child radio star, actor, television presenter (he hosted one of

songwriter, arranger, drummer, novelist and general writer.
Torme, who added the accent to his name (an Ellis

in High School because “it looked classy”, began as a pop
singer in the crooner era, notably with the rather sugary vocal
group The Mel-Tones, and enjoyed a huge following in the
late 1940s. His light, feathery baritone earned a string of
extravagent sobriquets from the famous New York disc jockey
Fred Robbins, including “Mr Butterscotch” and the one which
stuck, “The Velvet Fog”.

Thereafter, though, he increasingly pursued a more jazz-
oriented style of singing, and set about shrugging off this

with Marty Paich for Bethlehem Records,” Torme recalls,
“and that was really my transitional period into becoming a
jazz-oriented singer. I have extended my range by about four

From 4 os crooner through 50s
King of Cool to 80s Was (Not
Was) cameo and beyond — Mel
Torme has always kept a jump

AHEAD OF THE IN THING.

Kenny Mathieson overviews

THE VOICE THEY CALLED THE

Velvet Fog.

approach to singing, certainly in the so-called jazz mode, is
totally different from the kind of whispy, foggy singing I used
to do back in the 1940s, and right on into the 1950s.

sound now, I actually think the very timbre of my voice has
changed inordinately. To me, they sound like two different
people. I think I am a far more robust singer than I was back
then, and I sing from my diaphragm rather than my throat.”

Torme’s beautifully judged phrasing and acute rhythmic
sense (he wanted to be a big band drummer, and still plays
rather flashy drums at every opportunity) is steeped to the hilt
in jazz, but the singer is less convinced that he can be called a

are all basically singers of the popular song as we know it, it’s
just that people like Ella and the late Sarah Vaughan and a few
others - and I guess I’m one of those - are more jazz-oriented
or jazz-influenced than the average middle-of-the-road pop
singer, and that is why we are categorised as jazz singers.

“I’m not against that, in fact it’s very flattering, but I’m
just not sure it’s a proper appellation. I think to be a pure jazz

the time, working in a sort of permanent scat-singing mode
rather than singing lyrics, and frankly I think that would get
very boring for the listener.”

not ending with a dismissal of early efforts with the Mel-
Tones, beginning with a version of "White Christmas” on
Jewel in 1944. He recorded for Decca (1945), Musicraft
(1946-48), Capitol (1949-53), and Coral (1953-54), before

4SHWIRE

49SW1RE

TORME

the Bethlehem sessions with Paich (1955—57), sides for Decca
UK, Philips, and Tops, prior to signing with Verve in 1958,
after a five year gap, to Atlantic (1962—63), to Columbia
(1964-65), and after a further gap, to Capitol again (1969-70)
(plus a couple of sides for London in the early 1970s). Then,
30 years on, he cut what he now claims to be the first album
which satisfied him.

“I can literally pinpoint the first record that I was really
proud of as a singer, and that was an album called Live At The
Maisonette in 1974. I am proud of the Marty Paich records from
the mid-1950s because the arrangements are brilliant, but I
just wish the singing was better.

point of making those things, but I didn’t have enough control
of my vibrato, and while my range was okay for a popular
singer, it was a little bit limiting. I didn’t explore the
possibilities enough at that time, although I worked hard to
stretch that range later. I don’t think anything I have done
since then is anything to be ashamed of - some are better than
others, but in general I think the output since then is pretty

Much of that output, and all of it since 1982, has been on
Concord Jazz, usually in the company of pianist George
Shearing, with a couple of collaborations with arrangers Marty
Paich and Rob McConnell thrown in. Torme believes he has
found a sympathetic recording home of the kind too often
denied him in the past, notably during the 1960s.

“I didn’t like Atlantic or Columbia, or the later things I did
at Capitol, because they were all bent in pitting me against the
good pop singers of the day, which was foolish. It wasn’t my
bag, and I had matured in a different way to the requirements
of that music. If people wanted, for example, "Games People
Play”, they were better buying Joe South’s version.

“The A&R work on those albums was nothing less than
bloody stupid, and it was only when I moved to Gryphon (for
two albums in 1977—78), and then to Concord, that I found
the freedom to do what I want, and to sing what I feel I am
credible singing.”

While Torme is right to dismiss many of the
recordings in the 50s and 60s as not being up to his highest
standards, his blanket condemnation does no justice at all to
the best of them. His singing on some of the Verve recordings,
including Swings Schubert Alley (with the Paich Dektette) and I
Dig The Duke! I Dig The Count! (with Johnny Mandel), is
amongst the best he has ever done. For proof, check the
current Compact Jazz compilation Mel Torme , culled from the

The singer’s treatment of the standard repertoire is a highly
original one, even though his propensity for jazz, and for
experimenting with different treatments of a song, landed him
in trouble with one of his idols, Richard Rodgers. The famous
composer had very firm ideas of how his songs should be sung,
and took exception to what he saw as a cavalier treatment of

“Blue Moon” at a rehearsal.

“I never sing anything the same way twice, and that led to
me being crossed off Rodgers’ list. Years later, when David
Frost did a television tribute to him, Rodgers wouldn’t have
me on the show because he felt I had taken liberties with his

As it happens, Torme was in good company on the reject
list, sharing it as he did with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald
and Peggy Lee. Like those singers, and as he suggested in his
comments on Atlantic and Columbia, Torm£ is most comfort¬
able singing standards, leavened with his own compositions
and a smattering of contemporary songs by the likes of Donald
Fagen, Janis Ian, Billy Joel or Stevie Wonder. For the most
part, though, he feels modern songs do not suit his style.

“I can tell you right now that I don’t think they do, with an
occasional exception. I believe the grave mistake for mature
singers is to try to keep up with the youth market. You then
find yourself singing lyrics which are plainly inane, but more
importantly, are aimed at young singers. When an older
person sings them, they are simply not credible.”

These days, though, it is difficult to refute Torme’s belief
that he is singing as well as, if not better than, ever. At 65, his
control and phrasing remain immaculate, while his superbly
malleable voice and acute rhythmic sense enable him to glide
smoothly - without a wisp of fog - through even the most
densely-tangled of orchestrations, an area he maintains control
of by the simple expedient of writing his own.

“I have written all my own orchestrations since 1963, and I
don’t work with outside arrangers any more, except that I do
an occasional date with Marty Paich, who is one of my mentors
as an arranger. In that case, I will give him some ideas about
things I want to sing, but he writes the arrangements, and I
have nothing at all to do with that. The same thing applied
when I worked with the marvellous Canadian arranger Rob
McConnell a few years ago. It was collaborative from the
standpoint of the preparation of it, but the physical writing
was all down to Rob.”

Torme’s secondary career as a writer of books rather than
music or songs includes an acclaimed account of working with
Judy Garland, The Other Side Of The Rainbow , and a novel,
Wynner , as well as his autobiography It Wasn't All Velvet , and
the “warts and all” biography of his friend Buddy Rich, Traps
- The Drum Wonder (Oxford in the US, Mainstream in the
UK).

“Writing is not a sideline. I have been writing for a long
time, I think longer than many people realise. Writing has
been an adjunct to the singing, of course, but I don’t think of
it as a hobby or an avocation, but as a very strong branch of
what I do, and what I enjoy doing.

“Singing is the main thing, though, and I still love to
perform. The minute I don’t, in fact, I’ll be off that stage, but
I am having the best time of my career so far right now, and it
would be crazy to think of quitting just when I am having that
kind of success.” I

50SW1RE

Christy .

page 43

The one instance in this period where Christy steps clear of
constraints came with the 1955 Duet album, which reunited

“Lonely Woman” — it rejects emphatically any commoditisa¬
tion of song or singer and remains an important, though
generally overlooked document in the history of vocal music
within the jazz tradition.

57HWIRE

TAKE ME TO YOUR

Brian Morton lifts the lied on Schubert’s great song cycles.
(' Tha-t’s enough lied-ins — Ed . ) Illustration: Chris Robson

52SWIRE

questing intensity that belies any suggestion that Schubert’s
creativity was an untroubled conduit of pure melodic in
tion. There are songs that remain in a single key for many
pages, and others that change within a line of text, or that
modulate between a fixed major key and an uncertain chroma¬
tic atonality that anticipates the late, late Romanticism of
Schoenberg.

Schoenberg found to his surprise and delight that he gained
nothing by reading and learning the poetic texts on which
Schubert based his music. The songs convey (to borrow out of
the words of another great synthesizer, Ezra Pound) "an
intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time”.
Their use of tonality as an expressive shorthand (F major for
the natural cycle, E flat for religious awe, C for romantic

dialect and sense of irony that turns each and every perceived
characteristic into its opposite. The “through-composed”
songs, perhaps ironically, depend on a more obviously codified
repertoire of onomatopoeic effects, which to modern ears can
sound slightly lame, but there is never any mistaking the
dramatic thrust of the songs.

Schubert is inexhaustible and profoundly adult, in the sense
that neither his affirmations nor his imitations of the tragic are
ever narrowly personal. Winterreise ends with the traveller
being denied a place in an inn whose “green wreaths” clearly
suggest the hospitality of death. Schubert’s art is instinct with
life that it reaches no false resolutions, accepts no easy
comforts. The songs are one of the great intellectual disci-

Graham Johnson's complete edition of the Schubert songs, volumes
1-15, are available on Hyperion records. Further volumes follow
later this year.

54HWIRE

55HWIRE

Every month we test a
musician with a series of
records which they’re to
comment on and mark out
of five (five, AM!) - with no
prior knowledge of what it
is they’re hearing.

Ali Farka Toure

was tested by Philip Watson.

1 N V 1 S

1 B L E

>

—<^ ★ ALI FARKA TOURE*

>

JUKE

BOX

SSW1RE

57HWIRE

The elite and the street meet to
the heat: from Constant Lambert
to Sonic Youth, Keith Jarrett to
Holger Czukay, Dave Brubeck
to Augustus Pablo, Al Cohn to
Zoot Sims

AMM inaugurate their very own (extreme) youth movement:
(back row, l—r) Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gore, Eddie
Prevost; in front Keith Rowe on perched violin and
dodecahedrons. Pic: Frazer Wood.

58i WIRE

5S>iWIRE

67SWIRE

628WIRE

A NEW SOUNDWORLD: MUSIC WITH PURPOSE

BURKHARDT KIEGELAND

Leo • Matchless
Lovely • Intakt
Composers Voice
Balkanton/Gega
Slam • Camerata
Ear-rational
Konnex • Dossier
Atonal • CRI
Acta • Wondrous
Editions RZ
No Wave • Igloo
World Circuit
ReR • Splasc(h)
Attacca • Cramps
rtm • Mode
Mu • Nine Winds
Enemy • FMP
Fot • Daagnim
Plainisphare

63 =WIRE

64 SWIRE

S5SWIRE

67SWIRE

?=WIRE

©SWIRE

72SWIRE

73s WIRE

;swire

75SWIRE

ik/Costello .

Lied from 35

torrents. It hardly matters that this refusenik energy/attitude
can’t last, that it gives the lie to itself within months; for
enough observers, sending tremors round the world (that still
travel: first West, later East, transfiguring each), all official

normality - by Dylan’s quotability, by Grace Slick’s hallucina¬
tory dysfunction, by a thousand other scribbled messages. It
will end up being once more plugged, as iconoclastic semi¬
literate practice becomes smugly automatic, by the bloated,
inert body this new movement soon expands into. And those
60s figures who grew out of urgent noisy idiocy - the

moment out of their deep scepticism. If politics survived in
songwriting, it was recorded back into the personal.

Costello, like any alert, ambitious punk-era figure, was in

way through to the future that could fuse whatever there had
been of radical social doubt in this buried collective moment,

In particular, there was the rise of the Art of the Single
itself, the basis of Costello's craft. As the single replaced the
song, it allowed all levels of creative activity to manifest in one
person - the singer can set up the vehicle for his/her own
interpretation, his/her voice. On top of this, the single -
unlike the LP track - is almost always first heard in the context
of the Chart, that unscheduled marketplace meeting-point of
all styles and qualities, where no artist can predict who his/her
immediate neighbours will be. Costello put the limits of genre

Rodgers/Hart songwriting tradition could only achieve with
melody, harmony, writerly prosody, meter-play. In a way, in
his prolific flexibility, with the shifts of persona and attack, he

challenge to the whole of the rest of pop.

So that to return even to so great - so powerful, so
expressive - a tradition as Sinatra’s (to allow a further recoding
of the political back into the personal) would mean giving up
far more than you gain: even writing and performing your own
songs is a leser benefit, if you’re deliberately passing up the

of the muse is all very well - although of course many
musicians are the better for not trying to encompass too much

(when the supperclubbers tried to hop on board the 60s pop
bandwagon, the results were not attractive).

The problem is the sense that refinement in this sense is an
aesthetic advance rather than a strategic retreat: many are the
versions of the songwriter-as-craftsman in modern pop - from
Nick Cave to k.d. lang, there are significant figures working
in areas that aren’t simply Heritage Industry resale (there’s
plenty of this as well). None of them will ever be our Sinatra -
self-exiles in their corners of the market, they can’t rise to any
kind of world-spanning timelessness without throwing off
precisely the deliberate parochialism that gives them focus and

wanting too much.

market-ghetto, of appropriate product-bel
death of the 7" and the consequent change in
operation of the charts - their gradual multiplication, ir

without a terrain to manoeuvre on. Music as a whole only exi
as a solidified spectacle: all allowable motion comes witf

for such motion renders itself son
Actually, if Mighty Like A Rose i
himself a new, even vaster task -
parade of parody, p

anything to go by, h
the LP resembles tl

bygone styles, but h

side by side
longer intent on giving them new

Beginning with the ugly, angry, easy-target Beach Boys
remake (“The Other Side Of Si
Pop-literacy like a garrotte for all trivial pleasure, for al

ly explicit he is, about rendering a genre no longer listenable

ick

The form failed hi

tself, bi

7 -WIRE

788WIRE

Compiled by the British Library National Sound Archive (NSA), in
association with The Wire , This is the definitive 6000-entry index to a
decade of informed comment and provocative opinion.

The Wire Index has been derived from the NSA’s POMPI database, which
is published actually by the British Library as POMPI: popular music

magazines since 1984.

To mark The Wire’s 10th birthday/100th edition, the NSA Jazz Section has
revived the “Wire file”, expanding it to include Soundcheck - more than
4000 record reviews covering a very wide musical spectrum (a useful guide,
by the way, to the NSA’s own collection activity over the same period of

The Wire Index is now available, price £8.00 (+ 95p p&p). Cheques made
payable to The Wire, or credit card payments giving full billing address and
expiry date to be sent to:

ROSHMI KHASNAVIS
THE WIRE

Namara House, 45^6 Poland Street, London W1V 3DF

75>IWIRE

C L A S S I F

E D

tie advertisers 50p per desk, 2 Tasca

de advertisers, except semi-display situatior
ant, £25 per column centimetre. Minimum

LOL COXHILL Collector seeking any and all
items by and/or including this artist. Especially
seeking "The Promenaders" LP or tape, "Fingers
Remember Mingus' LP and "Fool's Meeting " LP

(any format) will be considered. All contacts will
receive a reply. Send information on item ( format,
condition, price) to: Tom Wilkins, 14 Beagle
ClubRd., Carlisle, PA 17013, USA.

“SOME PEOPLE go to improvised mu

would be like a,

Anything at all would be quite literally something
other than else. We’re down on our knees begging,
brother, Paul and John Wilson, 65 New Moss
Road, Cadishead, Manchester, M30 5JW.

16 TRACK RECORDING STUDIO, with

Graphic Equaliser, Microphones and stands, et,
6211, 10a.m.-4p.m, weekdays.

35M/M ACMIOLA FILM EDITING

separate magnetic and picture heads, built in early
1940's and a very attractive Deco looking piece of
equipment. Valve amplifier, 240v. Certainly a
talking point and definitely a rarity. An unusual
collectors item. To view and sensible offers to
COLIN 081 958 2500. After 8.00 pm any

Politics, Film, Music, Literature and Life in
general. The Editorial favours imaginative
honesty over dull journo-speak - let the voice of the
street be heard! You've got good taste, but have you
anything to say? If so, send words or images to
Robin, Flat D, 11 Leigh St, London WC1H
9EW or phone him on 071-383 3910. Typed
workprefered, if not, clearly written - include
SAE for returns. Under the paving stones, the

DO YOU run!are you an artist on an
INDUSTRIAL/EXPERIMENTAL label? Fee
up with receiving no airplay? Moan no more; neu
Manchester radio station MCR presents
STEELWERKS, attempting to cover the complete
history of the genre - Neubauten to Nine Inch
Nails. Throbbing Gristle to Thrill Kill Kult.

ien our horizons while expanding your
audience. Relevant publications, fanzines etc also

Richard Smith, 2, Vale Close, Dronfield,
Sheffield, S18 6SF, tel. 0246 412051. Nobea.

THE JON LLOYD QUARTET: The quartet
comprises Jon Lloyd on saxophones, John Law at

The group's first CD releases on LEO in 1991
was called SYZYGY and was WILDLY

This recording is STILL available direct for the
sum of £10 which includes postage.

This group is worth checking out! Contact Jon

London SW9 7PU.

JAZZ MAGAZINES. Approx 450 back issues

1980s. For quick sale in lots of 50. Only £1 each
plus postage at cost. Call Ray on 0706 31597.

CLASS

F I E D

80SWIRE

Monday 28th September RFH • 7.30prr

KRONOS

QUARTET

Music from their new album
Piecesof Africa and new works
y Gorecki and Arvo Part

BALANESCU

QUARTET

laying works by David Byrne,
ichaelTorke, Gavin Bryars and
Alexander Balanescu

I RFH - Royal Festival Hall • QEH-Queen Elizabeth Hall

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sunday 27 September 1992
Royal Festival Hall
Pre-concert performance
6.45pm South Bank foyer
Drill for two pianos by

STEVE

MARTLAND

Concert 7.30pm
conducted by Andrew Davis.
Steve Martland introduces
his work Babi Yar
Box Office 071-928 8800
Further information and

leaflet 071-927 4714

Steve Martland:

'... the most exciting and
original composer of his
generation' City Limits

DDE

SFiWIRE

EVERYTHING

?=WIRE

V